Excerpts from a new article at Aeon by Natalie Emmons:
We see faces in the clouds and we might just see Jesus in our toast: the fact that we see anyone at all tells us that the human mind is actively searching for agents, even in the most ambiguous of situations.
…Bering and his colleagues set their sights on what psychologists call ‘intuitive mind-body dualism’ as an alternative…The study deliberately included a cluster of children too young to have been exposed to much religious testimony at all, to see whether even they had an inkling that a part of an individual survives death.
…The researchers found that even from the youngest ages, children tended to respond that the dead mouse retained its mental faculties, such as the ability to experience sadness and know things, but that it no longer had bodily states, like the need to eat or drink. As the researchers reported in Developmental Psychology in 2004, this was consistent with intuitive mind-body dualism and confirmed that children reasoned about the mind differently from the body after death: it was only the mind that tended to be viewed as immortal. Notably, they found that younger children were more likely than older children to endorse the idea of eternal life.
…To evaluate whether children possess a deep-rooted, unlearned sense that there is eternal life, I had to find a new experimental approach. My solution was to develop a way of examining children’s intuitions about the prospect of eternal life that avoided the topic of death entirely. After much contemplation and correspondence with Bering, I decided that asking children about the time before biological conception might resolve the issue.
…Namely, children from both cultures had a persistent bias to judge that their emotions and desires – but not their intelligence or bodily states – remained intact during the time before pregnancy. What’s more, the intuition that one’s emotions and desires were eternal endured even as the children grew older, although older children judged they had fewer prelife capacities overall.
In addition to showing that eternalist beliefs are not learned, another significant finding from this work is that children did not think that they had intelligence during the time before conception. This suggests that children are not simply relying on intuitive mind-body dualism to guide their judgments. Rather, from early on, they are sensitive to different aspects of the mind and view only emotionality and desires as the essential core of an individual; these traits, rather than pure intelligence, are what humans intuitively embrace as so elemental that they are thought to precede our existence on Earth.
I intuitively knew that about humans before I was born.
Glen Davidson
“Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’?” – Matthew 21:16
Does spoon bending count as evidence for dualism?
Mung,
The kids in the study believe that they existed before birth or pregnancy. What does that have to do with praising Jesus?
Amazing! And the Darwinian explanation is…?
…found in the large experimental and theoretical literature on human theory of mind.
Mung,
Answer my question, and then we can talk about yours.
The kids in the study believe that they existed before birth or pregnancy. What does that have to do with praising Jesus?
quote:
Listen to me, O coastlands, and give attention, you peoples from afar. The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother he named my name.
(Isa 49:1)
and
For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O LORD, from my youth. Upon you I have leaned from before my birth; you are he who took me from my mother’s womb. My praise is continually of you.
(Psa 71:5-6)
and
Yet you are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts. On you was I cast from my birth, and from my mother’s womb you have been my God.
(Psa 22:9-10)
end quote:
Pre birth experiences sound like praise to Jesus (the Lord) to me
Who’d a thunk I’d have so much opportunity to quote scripture on an atheist web site while still staying on topic.
miracles do happen 😉
peace
ps that was fun
When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that He did and the children shouting in the temple complex, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant
That doesn’t answer my question, Mung.
The kids in the study believe that they existed before birth or pregnancy. What does that have to do with praising Jesus?
fifth,
That’s because your thinking is muddled.
The kids in the study didn’t praise Jesus. They just attributed emotions and desires to themselves in the time before pregnancy.
Mung,
Your perception of Charles Darwin as the anti-Christ is obvious, and so is your lack of knowledge of modern evolutionary theory. “Darwinian” is an inaccurate label.
Thanks for posting this, keiths.
This is one reason why I don’t think that theism is stupid. It’s a perfectly reasonable interpretation of the world, and seems to come naturally. Even children who never believed in any specific religious stories (and there are plenty of children brought up in religious homes who never believed a word of it, just assumed that the Sunday School stories were fiction like other fictions), seem to retain questions about what happens to you after you die. For a while my son maintained he didn’t “believe in God”, but he did believe in Jesus. And he refused to believe in death.
Second hand reports don’t count.
Another example of the situations Mung looked at in his postings on the book A Natural History of Natural Theology.
For someone who already accepts arguments against substance dualism, this analysis of our cognitive apparatus can help explain why we find such dualism intuitively appealing.
For theists who do not accept arguments against substance dualism, it can be interpreted as evidence of how God created us, as in the Matthew quote Mung provides earlier in the thread.
LRB Review: Colin Dickey on Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible by Jerry A. Coyne and The Territories of Science and Religion by Peter Harrison
There’s quite a bit of good, ongoing research into the past-life and “between-lives” information provided by children, especially between the ages of 2-6.
What makes you think the research is good, William?
Let’s not derail the thread, EL, by making it all about me.
Yes, he’ll pull the “you’re mean” defence. William, please start a thread on ‘good evidence’ (again) so we can point / laugh / expel milk from noses.
Fuck me that article WJM linked to…
Well, it wasn’t supposed to be. It was supposed to be about the research you mentioned.
Then why’d you ask a question about me?
Yoiks! I need a drink.
It was a question about the quality of the research, William.
No, it wasn’t.
William J. Murray,
Yeah, let’s not derail the thread by making it all about you!
Here’s something me great research. Don’t ask me about it….
Stop trying to make this thread about you.
It was a question about why YOU thought that the research was of good quality, William, as you presented it as such. Same goes for the research referred to in the OP. There’s no point in discussing the significance of a finding if the finding itself is in doubt. It would be like discussing why unicorns are pink before establishing that there is any good evidence for pink unicorns in the first place.
The article referenced in the OP is a nice essay, but it’s hard to evaluate the research it refers to, because it doesn’t include any references to the original research. Nor does the article you reference. But you refer to it as “good research”.
I’d like to know why you think so. Not because I want to know about you, but because I want to know what it was about the research that led you to conclude that it was “good”.
It doesn’t look very good to me, on the basis of the paper I found by the researcher in question.
On the other hand, the methodology described in the article referred to in the OP looks much sounder.
Wow English as a zeroth language…
From the article… “Even though accepted scientific evidence denies the possibility of immortal life…”
Interested in just how this comes out of accepted scientific research, sure dead bodies tend to stay dead and there are mind-body dependencies, but it’s kind of hard to imagine science speaking to the issue at all. Maybe an overall worldview of scientism or naturalism?
Also worth noting that the alternative the researchers positioned intuitive mind-body dualism against was the idea of the afterlife as a reaction to fear of death (per terror-management theory)
The big question raised by the article is of course interesting as well. It’s intriguing data, regardless of which side of the theism fence you sit on.
From a Christian perspective, I’m reminded of C.S. Lewis and Tolkien’s musings on such shared intuitions. Is it (just) an emergent phenomenom? Or does it say something real about our nature as humans?
It’s also at least resonant with the thought from Ecclesiastes: “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but man cannot discover the work God has done from beginning to end.”
Here we encounter my rationale for offering a collaboration on the webapp to test PSI claims.
You claim that the research on PSI and RNG is valid.
We replicate that research using protocols you have agreed
We do not see the results that the original studies did.
Now, if we don’t replicate the results you’ll have to somehow explain that. Along the way you might consider the option that the original research was flawed somehow.
So in fact my offer (albeit genuine – I’m still happy to do the work) was really just a ruse to force to confront the fact you are perhaps not adept at assessing the validly of this sort of research.
By being unable to justify your claim that this particular research is “good” you’ve made that point for me, saving me that effort. So thanks for that.
EL said:
It baffles me that you don’t realize this is indeed a question about me, not the research. If you have questions about the research, it is as available to your perusal as it is to mine. Any question you have about the research can be answered by looking it over yourself.
But, your question isn’t about the research, it’s about me – why I characterized it as “good”.
What possible difference does it make to the subject of this thread (or to your evaluation/examination of the research I referred to) why I personally characterized the research as “good”?
mossvuce,
This is part of what I’ve argued before about the ideological bias of mainstream science; it not only puts blinders on, it ridicules certain areas of research, thus making it difficult to research. Who wants their reputation ruined by positing theories and creating experiments about that which defies the mainstream ideology – about that which the mainstream ideology actually vilifies?
Some children seem to have very clear memories about past lives. Hypnotic regression has also been used to develop some good evidence, but it’s not clear what that information represents, if it is actually carried from one incarnation to the next, or if it is available to be accessed generally.
No, I never made that claim. In fact, I’ve gone out of my way to reiterate and explain that (1) I don’t know if any research is valid or not because, you know, I’m not a scientist, and (2) I don’t care if it is valid or not, as all my beliefs are based on entirely different criteria, and (3) I’m not attempting to “prove” the “validity” of anything to anyone here.
When I post a link to published research, I’m not claiming it proves anything. I’m just posting a relevant link to current research. What I find interesting (and entertaining) is not whether or not the research itself is “valid”, but rather the reactions of certain ideological factions to that research. It’s as predictable as The sun coming up in the morning.
If you just paid attention to my posts, such a ruse would have been entirely unnecessary. I have explicitly admitted / acknowledged I have NO CAPACITY WHATSOEVER to “assess the validity of this sort of research”. Whether or not it is actually valid is entirely irrelevant to me and to my reasons for posting such information.
Dr. Ian Stevenson is considered the foundational resource for research about the past-life statements made by children, having collected and analyzed data from over 3000 cases. He has an extensive publishing record on evidence for reincarnation and psi phenomena. It’s worth it for those interested to check him out.
I was asking why you thought it was good, William. So sure, it’s about “you” in the sense that I wanted to know your reasons.
Just as I’d ask anyone who recommended a piece of research and who said it was “good” why they thought so.
And most people would give me a straight answer, e.g. that it was a well-conducted study [add in relevant methodological details]. And I’d say: OK, sounds interesting, I’ll check it out.
It wouldn’t be a question about them, personally – it would simply be a request from the reasons they had concluded it was “good”.
Why would you think it’s different for you?
Well, exactly, William. That was why I asked. On this occasion you did in fact assess the research – you said it was “good”. So I wanted to know the grounds on which you made that assessment.
Not because I want to know about you, but because I wanted to know about the research.
But you assume the reactions are based on ideology, so your reasoning is circular. It could equally be (and I would argue, is) based on a critique of the methodology – which you happily concede you are not equipped to evaluate. Well, I am.
Not if you don’t give the source. You just linked to an article about the research, not the research itself, and you implied, by giving your assessment (“good”) that you had evaluated it.
Turns out you hadn’t.
Yet you said it was good.
An analogy:
Evolutionary theory tells us that gryphons can’t exist if evolutionary theory is true – the theory was partly advanced to explain why creatures like gryphons are conspicuous by their absence in the living or fossil record.
Let’s say that while most palaeontology papers fail to report any evidence for gryphons, there is a subset of palaeontology, let’s call it cryptopalaeontology, that does, regularly.
However, time after time, when these papers are examined closely, flaws are found in the methodology. Fraud is common; poor control conditions are frequent; other researchers cannot replicate the findings.
As a result, any new paper on gryphon evidence is treated with more than usual skepticism by nainstream palaeontologists. The cryptopalaeontologists however, are outraged by this, saying that their entire field is rejected for “ideological” reasons by scientists wedded to the evolutionary theory.
And so the tired old argument goes on: cryptopalaeontologists accusing the mainstream of “ideological blinkers” and mainstream palaeontologists accusing the cryptos of shoddy methodology.
In other words, I suggest that what you see as “ideology”, some of the rest of us, who, incidentally, DO have methodology training, see as methodological rigour.
If the only studies to report “paradigm-shifting” effects turn out, consistently, to have bad methodology, then one perfectly viable explanation is that there are no “paradigm shifting” effects, merely wishful thinking by people not rigorous enough in their methodology to successfully falsify their own speculations.
.
99.999… percent of kooks give the rest a bad reputation.
EL said:
Yes, EL. You’ve made that point before. I didn’t forget. So?
Right. If I don’t give you the source, you can’t possibly find it. I said: “It’s as available to your perusal as it is to mine.” And it is.
Let me put the pieces together for you, EL. Assessing the validity of research is not the same as evaluating the research. Since I cannot assess research validity (which I have stated long before now), my evaluations and characterizations do not (indeed, can not) have anything to do with whether or not I find the research scientifically valid.
EL, I realize you won’t remember this in the future, but I’m not trying to prove anything. I’m certainly not trying to convince you, or OMagain, or any other atheistic regulars here of anything. I’m not making or defending any scientific or pseudo-scientific claims. I have no capacity to do so; I have stated such; why you and other continue to interpret me as if that is what I am doing is your problem, not mine.
I post links to relevant research and studies in appropriate threads for my own purposes. You are free to find such research dismissable and flawed. It is of no concern to me.
EL said:
Because I’m not a scientist and I’ve already stated in the past that (1) I have no way of assessing the validity of any scientific research, and (2) I’ve stated in the past that I don’t care if any research is considered valid or not because I believe as I wish.
So …. all you could be asking me is some trivial personal question about why I used the word “good”, which would be entirely irrelevant to the thread.
Have we gone far enough into left-field for you now?
Well, it turned out to be quite hard to find, as it wasn’t linked in your article (nor btw is the research referred to in the OP). However, you evaluated it as “good” so I sought further information (seeing as you can’t tell whether it is “good” from the article you linked to). But you won’t answer.
In that case what the hell do you mean by “evaluating”? Because as in science the two are virtually indistinguishable. Research can’t be “good” unless the methodology is sound.
In that case I suggest you stop describing research as “good” or even “bad”, and instead simply describe it as “interesting” or “believable to me personally”.
You seem to want to have your cake and eat it, William – to abdicate all responsibility for evaluating evidence yet nonetheless assign it a value. And, furthermore, malign the integrity of others by attributing to “ideology” what is equally well attributable to understanding of what constitutes valid methodology, especially given as you readily concede you are not equipped to tell the difference.
So it’s a bit annoying.
If you don’t want to be taken seriously, try not to post statements that sound like serious statements.
I guess. It seems that what you are in effect saying is “ignore my posts about science because I don’t know what the hell I am talking about.” Which would be sort of OK, if you didn’t repeatedly malign the integrity of those who do.